


D&D&D (Dungeons and Dragons and Diners)

by Anonymous



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Dungeons and Dragons, El and Max and Steve are bros, Family Bonding, Gen, I Know Nothing About Dungeons & Dragons, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Relationship, Steve Harrington is a Sweetheart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23097793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Steve fumbles his way through a game of Dungeons and Dragons, tries to pretend he knows what the hell he's doing, and basically gets laughed at by the whole Party.Also, his neighbor is there.Because this is just where his life's at, these days.
Relationships: Steve Harrington & The Party, Steve Harrington/Katherine "Kat" Tracy
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25
Collections: Anonymous





	D&D&D (Dungeons and Dragons and Diners)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_most_beautiful_broom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_most_beautiful_broom/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Waitress and the King](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13748442) by [the_most_beautiful_broom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_most_beautiful_broom/pseuds/the_most_beautiful_broom). 



> Disclaimer: everything I know about Dungeons and Dragons comes from either Stranger Things or The Adventure Zone, which is probably pretty apparent from this whole thing in general.
> 
> Kat belongs to the_most_beautiful_broom, and you should check out her story right now, if you haven't already!

“Okay,” Steve said, staring at the sheets of paper spread out in front of him. “So I roll a dice.”

Mike dragged a hand down the side of his face, breathed out through his nose. “Yes.”

Steve looked at all the dice he’d lined up in a neat little row. “Which one?”

“A D20,” Dustin said, exaggeratedly patient.

“Right. Which one’s that?”

“See the dice with a 20 on it?”

“No.”

“Find the dice with a 20 on it,” Dustin said, but his patient tone was wearing pretty thin.

Max pointed from her spot on Steve’s left. “It’s that one.”

“No, it isn’t,” Steve said. “It doesn’t have a 20 on it.”

“ _Steven_ ,” Dustin said.

Max pointed again. “That one does.”

“Yeah, but that one’s yours.”

“Are you doing this on purpose?” Mike asked.

“Kind of,” Max said, and Steve said, “Not really, no.”

“God,” Lucas groaned, but Max shot him a look, and he held his hands up in surrender.

“Okay.” Steve flipped over the nearest dice, saw a 20 on its face, and scooped it up, triumphant. “I found it.”

“Good job,” Max said, cheerful.

“Thanks.”

“Now roll it,” Mike said, much less cheerful.

“Okay.” Steve rolled the dice.

There was a momentary pause.

Then Mike, sounding like each word was causing him physical pain—“What does it _say_?”

“Uh,” Steve squinted at the numbers. “Eighteen.”

“Is that good?” Max asked, and Steve shrugged. “I think that’s good.”

“Oh, God, this is killing me,” Mike muttered. “This is literally killing me.”

“An eighteen’s good, right?” Steve asked, and Dustin reached over, patted his arm.

“Yes,” he said. “An eighteen is good.”

“Nice,” said Max, and held out her hand for a high five.

Steve obliged.

“Okay,” Mike said from behind his weird little portfolio trifold thing. “So with an eighteen, your check succeeds.”

“Cool,” Steve said, and tried to remember what it was he’d been checking for in the first place.

“The room is pretty empty,” Mike said. “Except for a bunch of old clothes in the corner, which you, Caliban, with your perception check—”

“He means you,” Max whispered, overly loud.

“Yeah, caught that,” Steve whispered back in the same tone. “Thanks.”

“ _Caliban_ ,” Mike said. “With your perception check, you can see that it’s not just a pile of old clothes. It’s actually the skeleton of one of the old priests.”

Steve thought about that.

“How do I know it’s a priest?” he asked.

Mike glared. “Maybe because it’s wearing a priest’s robes?”

“He could’ve stolen it,” Steve said.

“Or she,” Max added, and Steve pointed at her in agreement.

“Gosh, you’re right,” Max said, flat. “You’ve blown this case wide open. Someone stole a priest’s robes for no reason and with no actual motive.”

“Nice,” Max said again, and Steve high fived her again, just to be obnoxious.

“Is the skeleton holding anything?” Lucas asked. “Can we at least _try_ and move this along?”

“Funny you should ask,” Mike said, sounding relieved to be back on track. “As Caliban draws closer, you see that the skeleton is clutching a burlap sack in its bleached-white hands.”

A pause.

Steve looked up from re-aligning all of his dice to see that the rest of the Party was looking at him, expectant.

“Oh, is it still my turn?”

Even Will looked a little pained at this, although Max was still grinning like she was having the time of her life.

“Steven,” Dustin said. “I’m going to tell you this one more time. We’re not taking turns. We’re just trying to keep the story going.”

Steve frowned. “Except for when we’re fighting.”

“Right,” Will said, and nodded encouragingly. “Except for when we’re fighting.”

Steve nodded, too.

Everyone was still waiting.

“So it’s still my turn?”

Dustin sighed heavily. “Yes,” he said. “It’s still your turn.”

“Cool,” Steve said. “I pick up the sack.” Mike rolled his eyes.

“Okay, well you can’t just pick it up.”

“Why not?”

“Because a skeleton is clutching it in its bony fingers?”

“Right, but it doesn’t have any, like, muscles or anything.”

Anatomy wasn’t Steve’s strongest subject, but he was still pretty sure you needed muscles to be able to hold onto anything.

He was at least 80% certain on that one.

“Right,” Mike said, starting to sound frustrated again. “But it’s still being held.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “So I take it.”

“Fine,” Mike said. “You snap the fingers of this dead servant of the church, pry the book out of his grasp, maybe break a few ribs while you’re at it.”

“I ask him what he got,” Max chimed in, helpful as always. “Uh, hey, Caliban, what’s in the bag?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said, because how on earth was he supposed to know?

“Caliban says,” Mike rejoined smoothly. “But as you peer into this old, moth-eaten burlap sack, you see the glint of something gold and heavy.”

Steve glanced at his dice, at his character sheet, over at Max. “Is it gold?”

“It’s not gold,” Mike said, before slipping into his _I’m telling a story_ voice. “You lift it out, careful and reverent, and you see that it’s a book—but not just any book. This book is written on the finest paper, with gold edges and a jewel-encrusted cover, filled with gorgeous scrolled writing and brilliantly illuminated letters. You get the feeling that this book was the abbey’s pride and joy, and the priests who were here died defending it to their last breaths.”

Steve didn’t point out that if the book was still there, then whatever attacked the priests must not have been very good at searching corpses, since it’d killed all the priests and then, what, just given up and bailed?

Instead, he said, “So I got a book.”

“You should write that down on your paper,” Max suggested.

“Oh, right,” Steve said, and enunciated each word out loud as he wrote. “I…got…a…book.”

Mike sighed, laid his hands down flat behind his trifold. “You guys are just the worst.”

“Be honest,” Kat said, as Steve swiveled his seat back and forth at the diner. “Are you actually this bad, or are you just faking it?”

“I’m always honest,” Steve said, absent. “About half and half.”

Honestly, when Dustin had started insisting that Steve join The Party in their weekly Dungeons and Dragons games, he’d thought it would all blow over soon.

By the time he realized that the younger boy was apparently serious, it had been way too late to track Jonathan down and explain how the game was supposed to work, so he wasn’t exactly faking the fact that he was in way over his head and generally didn’t have a clue what he was doing.

_However_.

However, Max was just as clueless as he was, and El kind of floundered a little, on the rare occasions that Hopper would let her join.

So Steve figured it was easier to let Mike and Lucas and Dustin roll their eyes at him, because what the heck else was he there for, right?

So, yeah, maybe he was playing it up a little.

At any rate, it was kind of funny either way.

“That’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told,” Kat said, without any malice. “So why keep pretending?”

Steve thought about how Max had fumbled around for her dice the night before, about the way Lucas and Mike had been too busy complaining about Steve’s inability to remember his character’s name to notice how she’d grabbed the wrong dice two times before finding what she was looking for.

“Because it’s easier,” he said.

Kat wrinkled her nose, but he thought she maybe looked a little bit fond, in spite of herself. “Liar.”

Steve widened his eyes. “Who, me?”

“Who else?” Kat took the salt shaker he handed her and began to refill it from one of the larger cans behind the counter. “But you’re having fun?”

He shrugged. “Despite my best efforts.”

She rolled her eyes. “We’re out of high school, Steve. If you’re worried about losing your street cred—”

“We’re in Hawkins,” Steve pointed out. “No one has any street cred.”

“Very true,” Kat agreed. “The Party seems to be getting a kick out of it, anyhow.”

“My mission in life,” Steve said, like that wasn’t at least partially true.

Kat gave him a look that said she could tell he wasn’t totally lying, and then passed the refilled salt shaker back his way.

“Maybe I should drop by for a session,” she suggested, clearly joking, and Steve grinned at the idea.

“I think Mike might start to cry,” he said, because the younger boy had already complained at great length about how difficult it was to write new characters into the plot.

“Not as a player,” Kat said. “Just to watch.”

“You could help Mike with the voices,” Steve said.

“Absolutely not.”

“He could use the help.”

“From what I hear, _you_ could use the help,” Kat said, innocent, and Steve scowled at her.

“Don’t be hateful,” he grumbled, and she laughed.

“I could help you with your backstory,” she offered. “Actually flesh out the character.”

It probably couldn’t hurt.

“Caliban is a mystery,” Steve protested anyways. “An anathema.”

“An enigma?”

“That’s what I said. Caliban doesn’t have a backstory because he doesn’t know the rest of the adventurers well enough to discuss his personal life with them.”

“Caliban doesn’t have a _backstory_ ,” Kat corrected, “because you forgot to prep one and then panicked in that booth over there—”

She pointed, and Steve didn’t bother looking, since he already knew she was right.

“—that whatever you came up with wouldn’t be cool enough to impress a bunch of middle school Dungeons and Dragons experts.”

Steve hesitated.

Kat waited.

“Is that why?” he asked, and she laughed. “I don’t think that’s why. I think it’s more the first thing, the whole enigma thing—”

Kat rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling as she slipped out from behind the counter, went to go check on one of her other tables.

“You keep on thinking that, Harrington,” she said, and patted him on the shoulder as she breezed past. “If that’s what makes you happy.”

“What on _earth_ was that?” Kat demanded, six days later, and Max actually cackled in vindicated delight.

“Right?” she nearly crowed, and even El was looking a little bit smug.

Mike looked confused, behind his trifold.

“That was the barmaid,” he said, and Kat wrinkled her nose.

“Why does the barmaid sound like she just inhaled a helium balloon?” she asked, and Mike looked like he was beginning to regret caving to Dustin and Max’s combined insistence that Kat be allowed to spectate for one of their games.

“Because….because she’s a girl?” he offered weakly, and Will and Lucas both cringed.

_Good instinct,_ Steve thought, but he couldn’t stop grinning.

“Do I sound like that?” Kat asked, in the same voice she’d used to demand what on earth he was _thinking, Harrington, leaving out the Oxford comma in an application essay—_

“No,” Mike said, sounding trapped.

“Does Max?”

“No,” Max said cheerfully, when Mike didn’t look overly inclined to answer.

“Does El?” Kat pressed.

Mike scowled.

“Okay, I get the point,” he grumbled, and El reached over and patted him twice on the hand. “You come up with a better voice, then.”

Kat shrugged. “What’s wrong with a normal voice?”

Max pointed at her, in a very clear _I’ve been saying that this whole time_ kind of gesture.

“Do _you_ want to voice the barmaid?” Mike demanded, sounding distinctly stressed, and Kat thought about it.

Steve tried to figure out a way to say _I told you so_ without actually saying it out loud.

“Yeah, okay,” Kat said, and shrugged again. “What do I need to say?”

She dragged her chair over to sit next to Mike, so that she could read all his story notes over his shoulder, and Mike squinted sideways up at her, suddenly suspicious.

“You’re not going to help Harrington cheat, are you?” he asked.

Kat gave Steve a grin over the top of the trifold that had him feeling just a little bit nervous.

“Oh, really,” she said. “Now why would I want to do that?”

“We need to get the Tome back!”

“Well, we don’t know which way they went!”

“Yes, we do!”

“No, we don’t! We were literally all unconscious!”

“Max can do her tracking thing—”

“Who’s Max?” Max asked, and Steve bit back a laugh, saw that Kat was doing the same. “Did you mean Cordelia?”

Dustin glared. “Max, I swear to God—”

“Max isn’t here right now.”

“Oh, God,” Lucas muttered.

“If you’ve got anything to say, it’d better be in a bad Scottish accent while rolling a dice.”

“My Scottish accent is _phenomenal_!” Dustin protested, and Will said, “Is there a reason we decided all the dwarves were Scottish?”

“Cordelia can do her tracking thing,” Lucas said, apparently trying to restore the calm. “And then we can be on our way, no problem.”

“I need supplies to do my tracking thing, genius,” Max said. “Or did you forget that we were just robbed?”

“We could always steal someone else’s supplies,” Dustin suggested.

“Now that you’ve said that out loud,” Mike interjected, clearly trying not to laugh. “The innkeeper is looking at all of you suspiciously.”

Dustin swore, Kat raised an eyebrow, and he apologized.

“Okay,” Will said. “We can…buy supplies?”

“With what money?” Dustin asked. “Does anyone have high charisma?”

Will flipped over his own character sheet, frowned. “I’ve only got a +1 modifier.”

“I’m at a 0,” Max said cheerfully, and Lucas said, “I’m +2” at the same time as Dustin said, “I’m actually at a -1.”

“Did no one here choose to level up their charisma?” Mike asked, sounding stunned.

“Yeah, guys,” Kat said, and Dustin glared at her. “Come on.”

“Steve did,” Max remembered suddenly. “Uh, hey, Caliban, why don’t you go flirt with the innkeeper and get us the supplies we need?”

Steve felt the blood drain from his face.

_Absolutely not._

“Because I’m dying?” he guessed. “Because you little bastards used me as a human shield and I’m actually dying?”

“Is that in-character?” Mike asked, and Dustin said, “How come he gets to swear?”

“Yeah, that’s in character!” Steve said. “Caliban is really pissed about this.”

“Well, Caliban is still the only one with a +4 charisma modifier,” Max said, and he covered his sheet before she could keep reading over his shoulder. “So go flirt.”

This was such a bad idea.

“Fine,” Steve snapped. “I drag my broken, concussed self up to the bar, dripping blood all over the floor, and I flirt with the innkeeper.”

“Roll a charisma check,” Mike said, enjoying this just a little too much for Steve’s tastes.

He rolled.

“Eleven,” he said, and Mike gave an almost evil grin. “Plus four, that’s a fifteen.”

“Fifteen,” Mike echoed, and there was no doubt, he was definitely enjoying this. “I’m gonna need to hear you be persuasive.”

“No,” Steve said. “You’re not.”

“I’m going to need to hear you flirt with the innkeeper, Steven,” Mike said, and where had he gone wrong in his life, that he garnered this little respect from a bunch of twelve-year-olds? “For the verisimilitude of the game.”

“No,” Steve said again. “You’re not.”

“I’m sorry, do you want to get the Nameless Tome back or not?”

“I’ll kill you. In real life, I’ll kill you.”

“Is that Caliban speaking?” Mike asked, and Kat laughed.

“Yeah, it’s Caliban,” Steve said. “Caliban is speaking directly to you, Mike, the all-powerful god of this reality, and he’s saying he’s gonna kill you.”

“ _Steve_ ,” Kat said, because she was apparently still pretending this was a normal thing for normal human beings to do. “Your party needs you.”

“I hate you all,” Steve said, and she winked at him.

“Cordelia stole a pen and paper off one of the other clients,” Max said, because she was a horrible human being. “She’s ready to take notes on all of this.”

“Oh, God,” Steve mumbled.

“Titus is giving Caliban a thumbs-up,” Will said. “Like, _you got this, man!_ But it’s pretty clear he doesn’t believe it, you know?”

“Oh, _God_.”

“The innkeeper looks up from where she’s wiping down the bar, and she says—”

Mike pointed at Kat, who shrugged kind of helplessly.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked, a little higher than her normal voice, and Steve wasn't sure if she was imitating Sofia or Nancy, but either way, he was dead, he was literally dead, and this was hell.

“Uh, no,” he said, and definitely didn’t think about how eerily familiar this felt to sitting at the diner and wasting time. “No, I’m, uh, I’m good.”

“You’ve gotta convince me, buddy,” Mike said cheerfully.

“Oh, God,” Steve said one more time, and then sighed. “Okay, fine. You, uh, you come here often?”

“ _That’s_ your opening line?” Dustin nearly yelled, and Lucas slammed his forehead into the table and groaned, “We’re never getting our stuff back.”

Kat raised an eyebrow.

“I work here,” she said, still without enough of a change in her voice to let him pretend he was actually talking to anyone other than her. “Does that answer your question?”

Steve laughed in spite of himself, frantically racked his mind to come up with what he would actually say, if this was really happening.

“Sorry,” he said, because if Caliban was actually bleeding out all over the floor, he might as well lean into the whole disaster vibe, right? “I swear, I’m usually a little bit better at this.”

Kat didn’t look like she believed him.

Steve didn’t blame her.

“So,” she said. “What’s different this time?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said, and then threw whatever was left of his dignity out the window. “But I thought I should probably come over here and try to figure it out.”

“ _Gross_ ,” El whispered, and Lucas choked on a laugh.

“Well,” Kat said, clearly fighting not to laugh herself. “You let me know when you figure it out. In the meantime, I’ve got work to do.”

“Until when?” Steve asked, because all jokes aside, The Party really did need their supplies.

Kat hesitated, but at least she didn’t laugh in his face.

The rest of The Party had that base pretty firmly covered.

“What time do you get off?” Steve asked. “You know, so we can compare answers.”

“Is this actually how you flirt?” Will asked, sounding halfway between impressed and disturbed.

Steve ignored him.

“Cordelia’s lowered the notebook,” Max chimed in. “She’s just staring in horror.”

“Give him a break,” El said, because it was one of her new favorite phrases. “He’s concussed.”

“My shift ends at seven,” Kat said.

“Any chance we could talk before then?”

She tipped her head to one side. “Depends on how much discussion you think this is going to need.”

“Well, I’ve always been a firm believer in the whole _actions speak louder than words_ thing,” Steve said, before he could talk himself out of it, and Kat raised an eyebrow again.

“And just what kind of _actions_ did you have in mind?”

“Uh,” Steve said, suddenly remembering his surroundings. “The kind that’s kid-friendly and definitely isn’t something that would get me in trouble with any overzealous parents who run small-town police departments.”

Mike laughed, and Kat grinned.

“Bummer,” she said, and Steve's brain skipped about half a beat backwards and froze up completely. 

"Wait, what?" he started to ask, but Kat had already moved on, and he was left floundering in the dust.

"What do you think?" Mike asked her, once he was done savoring the moment. "Should we give it to him?"

Kat eyed him across the table with a speculative look. 

"Sure," she said finally, easily. "But only because he's cute."

"If I had a nickel," Steve said wearily, absolutely refusing to examine anything that had just happened more closely. "So did we get basic supplies or whatever?"

"Yeah," Mike said, sounding almost disappointed. "You got basic supplies." .

"Cool. Someone heal me before I die on this barstool."

"I have a healing potion," Max said, squinting at her character sheet. "But we might need that later."

"By all means," Steve said, and Kat was halfway to laughing at him again. "Take your time."

"You're helping Mike plot this thing, aren't you?"

Kat shot him a glance from the other side of the counter, where she was currently trying to tear open a cardboard box full of napkins that had apparently gone a little overboard with the whole sealing process. 

"He's got most of the outline already in place," she said, digging the handle of a spoon into the seam where the two flaps met.

"So that's a yes," Steve said, and handed her the pocket knife his dad had gotten him when he was younger than The Party, even.

Kat slit the box open.

"I'm sworn to secrecy," she said, and handed the knife back. "Do me a favor and grab the napkin holder off Table 5?"

Steve did so, thinking over which parts of the story felt more like something that Kat would have come up with.

"The forgotten stories," he said, sliding the empty napkin holder across the counter. "That was your addition, wasn't it?"

Kat tried to stuff a handful of napkins into the holder, and Steve reached across and held the thing in place to keep it from skidding halfway down the counter.

"I'm sworn to secrecy," she said again.

"So that's a yes, too," he said, and watched her wrestle the last few napkins into the already-full holder before turning back to the cardboard box with a sigh. "I can put that up."

"If you don't mind," she said, and stepped to one side to let him behind the counter. "Not every decline-to-answer is an answer in and of itself, you know."

"But sometimes it is." Steve had to stand on his toes, but managed to shove the box up onto its shelf and wondered how Kat was supposed to get it down when she needed it again. "What happened to the stepstool?"

"Broke a leg. How are we defining _sometimes_ here?"

"Did I not call that three months ago?" he grumbled. "I feel like I called that three months ago."

"Yeah, yeah, take it up with the boss man," Kat said, but then she tipped her head to one side and studied him. "How'd you know about the missing fairytales?"

"Please," Steve scoffed. "That's got you written all over it."

Kat grinned, waiting for a joke. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know," he said, because he wasn't that great at coming up with jokes on the spot. "It just felt like you."

She rolled her eyes, but managed to make it feel more fondly amused than actually annoyed.

"How charmingly nonspecific."

"Yeah, that's me," Steve said, and realized he was still standing behind the counter, figured he should probably move before someone saw and yelled at the both of them. "Charming."

"Okay, is it just me," Steve said. "Or does Caliban get knocked out way more than everybody else?"

"Not unlike real life," Dustin mused, and Lucas and Mike snorted. 

"Shut up," Steve said, just as a knee-jerk reaction. "Seriously, this is the third time in the last two sessions."

Mike shrugged. "Well, maybe if Caliban learned to roll dice better—"

"Caliban wouldn't have to keep rolling dice if the entire world wasn't out to get him!" Steve protested.

"Maybe the world wouldn't be out to get him if he stopped playing human shield for the rest of the party," Will pointed out, not unreasonably. 

"Maybe he'd stop playing human shield for the rest of the party if the world wasn't out to get him!" Steve couldn't help arguing anyway.

"We're getting off track," Mike said smoothly. "Everyone roll a perception check real quick?"

Everyone rolled.

Except Steve. 

Because Steve was still unconscious. 

"Two," Max said, and Lucas looked like he was about to comment, but changed his mind at the look on her face.

"Okay," Mike said, when everyone else had reported their scores. "So Diana, Titus, the Nameless Tome fell out of Caliban's pack when he was thrown to the ground—"

Steve groaned in pain, just to sell the bit.

"Stop whining, you're fine," Max grumbled, and El laughed.

" _But_ ," Mike said. "You two can see the empty pages halfway through the book, the ones you've been using as kindling, and there's something...strange about them."

"Strange like how?" Will asked, already scribbling away on his notes.

"Strange like they're not empty."

The whole table took a moment to absorb the news.

"The pages that you thought were empty," Mike continued. "They're covered in blue writing that has a strange glow to it, a weird kind of reflection from the crystals all around you."

"Is it invisible ink?" Dustin asked. "I think it's invisible ink. Can I roll to see if it's invisible ink?"

"You don't have to roll," Mike said too late. "It is invisible ink."

Dustin rolled a dice anyways. "Hey, guys, I just rolled an _is it invisible ink_ check."

"What'd you get?" El asked.

"Seventy-two. Guys, I think this might be some kind of invisible ink!"

"The writing," Mike said, with only the quickest eye roll, "starts in the middle of describing some great battle, but of course you don't remember ever hearing about it before."

"Does it say who was fighting?" Lucas asked, and Max asked, "Does it say who won?"

"Well, that's the problem, you tore a bunch of those pages out, remember?"

Will winced. "In retrospect, not a great move."

"Yeah, no shit," Mike said, and Steve got the feeling he'd been waiting to make that point for weeks now. "But Titus and Diana, as you leaf through these pages, you start to get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. It's not so much that you remember any of these long-forgotten heroes...as it is that you recognize them."

The table was silent. Kat wrote something on a scrap of paper, slid it over for Mike to read, and Steve watched them both, suspicious.

"How can we recognize fictional characters that were magically forgotten?" Dustin said slowly, like he was feeling his way around the problem.

"That's just it, they were magically forgotten," Mike said, significant. "The world has forgotten all about this band of six unlikely criminals-turned-heroes—"

"Oh, _shit!"_ Lucas yelped, and El gasped, both hands coming up to cover her mouth.

"—and their quest to keep the Nameless Tome out of the hands of the Golden Order—"

"The freaking _priests?"_ Dustin shouted, and the table dissolved into chaos.

Steve met Kat's eye across the table and saw that she was trying not to smile.

_ Did you do this?  _ he mouthed at her, and she shrugged.

_ Only helped,  _ she answered, and made a  _ so-so  _ gesture with her hand, as if to indicate how little she'd added.

Steve rolled his eyes.  _ So that's a yes. _

"But there's one more thing," Mike said, cutting through the chaos with an extremely smug sort of tone. "El, Will, I want you to roll—what, would that be an intuition check?"

"Sure," Kat said, and when the hell had she figured out all of this?

"An intuition check," Mike repeated, and the other two kids rolled.

"9," El said, and Will said, "19" with a quiet sense of satisfaction. 

"Is that plus modifiers?" Kat asked.

"Yeah," Will said, but El frowned at her sheet and then said, "Oh, wait, 13." 

"Okay," Mike said. "So, Titus, as you're flipping through these pages, you see something on the last page that makes your blood run cold."

"A page from Mike's diary," Max said, and Mike ignored her.

"It's two pages, actually," he said. "Side by side. On the left side, the page is about two-thirds of the way full of tally marks, some in different styles, some in different colors of invisible ink, but just slash after slash after slash, all down the page."

"Oh, no," Will whispered, and it was clear that Mike was building up to some kind of reveal.

"And on the right side, the last page in the book, it's just the same words, written over and over again, in six different handwriting, but the same line every time— _ next time, we'll know better. _ "

"Oh,  _ no! _ " Lucas whispered, louder than Will.

"The last time, though, you notice that the words are cut off halfway through, so that all it says is  _ next time, we'll know _ —"

"I feel an initiative roll coming on," Dustin muttered.

"And that's when you hear a set of footsteps coming up behind you—"

"I spin around to see who it is!" Max said, because she was still upset over the surprise attack that had sent the Party reeling last week.

Mike grinned.

"And the Lady of the Gale smiles," he said.

"Honestly," Kat said in a lilting, vaguely European accent. "I was getting tired of writing the same damn thing _." _

_ "No!"  _ El gasps, and Mike laughs out loud.

"Roll for initiative."

"Admit it," Kat said, You were surprised."

"Sure I was surprised," Steve said, clearing the table of all the empty paper plates that the Party had left behind. "But also, I'm an idiot."

"No, Caliban is an idiot," Kat said, and passed him a couple of plastic knives. "You're just very trusting."

Which kind of sounded like a deflection to Steve, but whatever, he'd take it.

"So which of us used to be in the Order?" he asked, and Kat paused where she was wiping down the table.

"Oh," she said. "So you caught that, did you?"

Steve shrugged.

"Well, she said  _ writing,"  _ he pointed out. "Not  _ reading. _ And there were six heroes in all the stories. So one of us must've swapped places with the Lady."

Kat tossed the rag into the laundry pile and then nodded.

"Nicely done," she said, and Steve tried to pretend he wasn't very proud of himself for having figured it out.

"Thanks," he said, and managed to make it come out as mostly sarcastic. "I try."

Kat, of course, wasn't fooled for a second.

"And they appreciate it," she said, and he scoffed.

"Tell that to Dustin."

Kat rolled her eyes, because, again, she was usually a little harder to fool than that.

"Stop fishing for compliments, Steve," she said, and took his stack of paper plates. "Of course they appreciate it."

Steve decided to let it slide.

"Okay" he said, and picked at a particularly nasty stain on the table with the edge of his fingernail. "So it's almost over, yeah?"

Kat ran her hand over the table one last time, wicking away any extra crumbs onto the floor.

"I think so," she said, and nodded again. "Yeah, I think it's maybe almost over."

_ Caliban dies. _

_ Takes a firebolt that was meant for Cordelia, and was already so weak from the final battle just beforehand that he'd forgotten that the Lady of the Gale had magic powers.  _

_ That's okay, Steve thinks.  _

_ If he hadn't, the blast would have hit Max, and Max has worked so damn hard on her character, and it was going to kill  _ somebody _ , no question.  _

_ So he kind of saw that coming, really. _

"Things go back to normal," Mike said into the silence that surrounded the table. "But it takes time. For a while, people keep coming up to you on the street, thanking you for what you've done."

"The first two times, Adam panics and pulls a knife on them," Dustin said, and Will laughed a little.

Steve was really only there for the hell of it, since Caliban technically died last week.

But it didn't seem right, the idea of skipping the last day.

He figured he ought to at least see how everything wrapped up.

"They kind of laugh it off," Mike said. "Now that they know the whole story, they know enough to see that coming."

The Tome had been destroyed about half an hour ago, by Steve's count.

All the stories had been released back into the world.

Everyone knew the whole deal.

Steve was fairly certain that that had been Kat's idea.

"But over time," Mike said. "You get used to it. To being heroes. It's not the worst thing to have to get used to."

It was so quiet, down in the Wheelers' basement, like the end of a really good movie.

Steve was spending too much time with these dorks, he figured, because God help him, but it was almost halfway to being emotional.

Everyone was quiet for a moment longer.

Then Max asked, "But what about Caliban?"

_ Damn it,  _ Steve thought.

He'd been sort of hoping they wouldn't bring it up.

"What about him?" Mike asked, and shrugged, voice purposefully casual. "He died in the caves, and the five of you remember his sacrifice, and that's all there is to it."

"But everyone else," Dustin said, because the book had been destroyed, but Caliban's name had been destroyed too, in a weird magical twist that Steve still didn't 100% get. "They don't remember."

"Everyone else forgets him," Mike agreed. "But not you five. You guys remember."

"Well, thanks for that, at least," Steve said.

"You're dead," Dustin reminded him. "You don't get to talk."

Kat was hiding a smile again, which Steve thought was rubbing it in a little.

"But that leaves one more point to be addressed," Mike said, and Kat pointed at something on his notes that no one else could see. "Uh, which one of you would take the time to go through his things and look for any family or whatever?"

"Me," Max said at once. "Cordelia would."

"Okay. Cordelia, after the battle, you sort through Caliban's pack, looking for any personal belongings that you think he would've wanted passed on."

"Oh, is that what they're calling it these days?" Steve grumbled, but there was about a 50/50 chance that Max was either feeling sentimental or just looking to loot his stuff.

"You're dead," she reminded him. "Shut up."

"And at the bottom of his pack," Mike said, ignoring this. "You find two very strange things. Roll for intuition?"

"Dude," Max said, because she'd already cleared her portion of the table.

"Just roll."

Steve handed her one of the dice he'd stolen from Jonathan, and she rolled it without bothering to check the numbers.

"Oh, look at that," she said, a blatant lie. "Natural 20."

Mike hesitated. "Was it really?"

"It was," El lied from the other side of the table, and Lucas said, "Absolutely, yep."

Mike clearly wasn't convinced, but it was late enough in the game that he ultimately just let it slide.

"Okay," he said. "So you reach into the bottom of this bag, and you pull out something metal, wrapped in a sheet of paper."

"Oh," Dustin said, and Steve knew that he'd guessed it right.

"It's a medal," Mike said, and one of the other Party members gasped. "A medal from the Order, for services rendered to the Church."

" _ Caliban,"  _ Dustin said, but Will was grinning.

"What does the paper say?" Lucas demanded, almost breathless. "Does the paper say anything?"

"Well, that's just the thing," Mike said. "It's totally blank."

"The crystal," Will said, and Max blurted, "I pull out the crystal I took from the caves!"

"The light of the crystal makes words appear on the page," Mike said. "And all it says, written just once, are the words—"

He paused, letting the moment stretch, and Steve caught Kat's gaze, almost rolled his eyes, but thought that might cheapen it.

" _ Next time,"  _ Mike said, with the air of someone closing a very long book. " _ Next time, we'll be better." _

"Oh my  _ God," _ Dustin said.

"And beneath that, there's a date," Kat put in, clearly trying to match Mike's somber tone. "37 ABY, Third Month, fifth day."

"The day before Caliban joined the Party," El breathed in realization.

"Did you know?" Dustin demanded, and Steve realized they were all looking at him.

Kat raised an eyebrow.

"Sure," he lied, and she smiled. "I knew all along."

"Dude," Lucas said.

And that was it.

There really wasn't anywhere else to go from there, and Steve thought that as far as endings went, it wasn't so bad.

For a moment, all was silent.

Then Mike said, "So Mom said she ordered pizza, and that when we were done, we should head upstairs."

"Good game, everybody!" Dustin blurted, and then there was a scramble to push back from the table as the Party made their mad dash for the food.

"Well," Steve said to the nearly-empty room, and Kat laughed a little. "So there's that."

"That was...it was a good ending," Steve said some time later.

He and Kat were standing at the Wheelers' kitchen sink, since the rest of the Party had been only too happy to abandon the dishes as soon as the pizza had been demolished.

"Thanks," Kat said, up to her elbows in soapy water. "You should have seen what it was like before."

"I  _ knew _ it," Steve said, and took the plate she handed him to dry.

"Knew what?"

"I knew you were writing most of it," he said, and he'd been here often enough to know where the plates went, so he figured he should just leave the cabinet open until the dishes were done.

"I did  _ not  _ write most of it," Kat said, and made a face at the sauce caked on the next plate. "I only...polished what was already there."

Steve snorted. "Oh, is that what we're going with?"

"Yeah, that's what we're going with," she said, and then snuck a look sideways at him. "Sorry you had to die."

"Ah, it's okay," Steve said. "Figured he kind of had to, right?"

Kat tilted her head to one side. "How do you mean?"

Steve shrugged. 

"It just made sense," he said. "One of us had to have been in the Order, Caliban was the latest to join, and Mike kept dropping all those hints about how the whole human shield deal was a guilt thing."

Kat hummed a little, thinking it over.

"So that meant Caliban had to die?" she asked, purposefully obtuse.

Steve rolled his eyes, because he knew what Kat sounded like when she was fishing for an explanation.

"Sure," he said. "Redemption and all that jazz. Come on, I've seen Star Wars."

" _ Have _ you?"

Kat sounded delighted, and Steve groaned.

"We literally just finished an actual Dungeons and Dragons game," he protested. "Let's not pretend either of us are too cool to have seen a nerd movie."

"You watched it after you met the Party," Kat said, smug, and he sighed.

"Yes, I watched it after I met the Party."

"You were doing  _ research. _ "

"Okay."

" _ Steven." _

"You sound like Dustin," Steve grumbled, but Kat laughed, and he couldn't help smiling a little bit, too.

" _ So?"  _ she pressed, and passed him another plate. "Which was your favorite?"

Steve wanted to roll his eyes again, but it wasn't like there was any getting out of this.

"The third one," he admitted, and she gasped in mock outrage.

"Dustin would say you're wrong."

Dustin  _ had _ said he was wrong. 

Repeatedly and at great length. 

"Dustin's wrong," Steve muttered, mutinous. "I liked the little teddy bear things, they were cute."

He and Travis and Joel and Jeff had made a whole movie night of it, mostly because Joel and Jeff had pointed out that Sofia would never let them live it down if any of the girls found out.

Then they'd all had to sit there and pretend that they weren't super into it for the next six hours, and that they hadn't noticed Travis borderline tearing up at the ending, because he was working through some stuff with his parents, which, to be fair, weren't they all—

"But Steve," Kat said, over the top. "Tom Cruise isn't in any of those movies. How  _ could  _ you enjoy a movie without Tom Cruise in it?"

"This is incredible," Steve said. " I play one round of Dungeons and Dragons, and I'm already being bullied."

Kat laughed. "Your life is so hard."

Her voice was impossibly flat, and Steve grinned at her expression.

He dried a few more dishes, and outside the kitchen window, everything was dark and quiet and still.

"You did a good job," he said, and Kat glanced over at him. "With the story, I mean. I thought--it was good. It was a good ending."

Kat handed him a fork, because El was going through a phase where she only ate pizza with a fork and knife.

"You think?" she asked.

Steve frowned.

"Of course," he said, because Kat was so good at all the things that he'd always struggled with, and it was so easy to forget that someone could be good at something and still not be sure.

"Well, thanks," Kat said, and pulled the plug out of the bottom of the sink. "I kind of liked it, too."

"Don't tell them," Steve added in a stage whisper, and she laughed, glanced over her shoulder to where the Party was talking loud in the other room.

"Wouldn't dream of it," she promised, and held her hand out for the towel he was using.

He handed it over, pulled open random drawers until he found the one that held the silverware, and then waited until Kat was done wiping down the counter.

The kitchen was quiet, despite the chatter from the other room, and Steve glanced out the window, saw again the empty street outside.

"Need a ride home?" he asked, and Kat waved a hand.

"I was just going to walk."

It wasn't too far, not really.

The only reason he'd driven in the first place was because he'd needed to give Dustin a ride, but Dustin and Lucas and Will had all gotten permission to sleep over, so that was that.

But it was still so dark outside, and it was still early enough in the year that the night was sure to be cold.

"Kat, come on, it's pitch black out there," he said, exasperated. "Let me give you a lift, okay?" 

Kat laughed, hung the towel over the handle of the refrigerator.

"Alright, Caliban," she said, and he huffed, crossed his arms.

"Okay?" he pressed.

Suddenly, without any real reason for it, he was so sure that she'd say no, and he didn't know why it mattered so much, but it sort of did, anyhow.

But Kat just glanced out the window and then lifted one shoulder in half of a shrug. 

"Yeah, sure," she said, and jerked her chin towards the other room. "Let me grab my stuff."

The rest of the Party was too busy planning the next adventure to pay them any real attention, and they left the house together, and Steve held the door, because he knew Kat would roll her eyes, and the night around them was still so quiet and vast.


End file.
